


This Mortal Soil

by marchingjaybird



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, Horror, Lovecraftian, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-09-12
Updated: 2010-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-11 16:57:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchingjaybird/pseuds/marchingjaybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things in the universe far older than mankind and one by one, they are awakening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Outpost 35-19780

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt to sort of meld Star Trek with a semi-Lovecraftian mythos. Hopefully it works and no one comes after me with torches. Huge thank you to skund for some awesome concrit, and to flatbear and feels_like_fire for endless encouragement.

This is the starship _Enterprise_, launched in less auspicious times, turned over to an untried captain and a crew fresh out of Starfleet Academy. The flagship of the fleet, she is bigger and faster than her sister ships and cuts a sleek line as she orbits a moon. She is out on a training exercise now; the crew has not had much experience with one another outside of a crisis situation, and her captain – James Kirk, already warming to his new station in life – has decided to flex their collective muscles. They have done well so far, moving into and out of warp, establishing an orbit, sending down an away team and retrieving them. He is ready to give the order that will return them to Earth when the officer at the comm, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, speaks.

"Receiving a distress signal, Captain," she says. She looks towards him, a frown furrowing her brow. Momentary discord as her gaze slips across the second officer – lips thinning and turning down, eyes narrowing very slightly – then she swivels at her station and bends towards the console, concentrating. "There's a Federation outpost not far from here. That's where the call is originating."

There is a hesitation in her voice. They are out on the very edge of Federation space, where attacks from the Klingon Empire are not unheard of. "Play it," the captain orders. Her fingers hesitate, but only for a moment, and the message booms across the bridge. It does not mention Klingons. It doesn't mention an attack at all. It's mostly gibberish, in fact, distorted by static and a dull roaring that sounds like a massive volume of water pouring into a confined space.

The crew is silent as the cacophony booms across the bridge, and when the message dies out more than one face is blanched in confusion and fear. Her fingertips rest lightly on her console and she betrays no twitch of expression when the captain gives the order.

"Plot a course," he says. The bridge bursts into activity, everyone bending to their work, all except for her. She shifts her fingers and plays the message again, over and over, and the skin on the back of her neck crawls.  
***

This is Federation Outpost 35-19780. It is nominally a mining facility, providing unprocessed ore to the Federation and selling off the overage to independent companies and manufacturing plants. There is also a scientific installation; at least, the scientists stationed there use it as jumping off point, though they are rarely found at the actual base. And who can blame them? It is a singularly unimpressive place, composed of long metallic hallways and podlike rooms devoid of decoration. Most of the men and women who reside here do so out of desperation. It is a place of final chances, a place to hide from the mistakes of the past.

The moon that houses Outpost 35-19780 is unnamed, catalogued and labeled on maps as merely an enumerated addendum to the world that it orbits – a world which, incidentally, is also not strategically important enough to merit a proper name. It is listed on maps as Epsilon Iod II, just another rock orbiting a star on the edge of its galaxy. The world, like its moon, is little more than a rock, though unlike the moon, it hides no essential mineral deposits. It is, on the whole, unremarkable. The people who live there call it Wasteland.

There is, interestingly, a token military presence at Outpost 35-19780. Ostensibly, this is because it is on the fringes of Federation space and the threat of Klingon raids is ever present. But to the people who have been there – to the people who _live_ there – the excuse is rendered immediately flimsy. What could the Klingon Empire possibly hope to accomplish by destroying a facility that houses, at best, twenty-five people? The Starfleet presence is negligible. The output from the mine is hardly worth the effort. Hundreds of larger installations mining much more precious metals exist, and Outpost 35-19780 may be on the fringe, but it is still firmly in Federation space. The peace these days is uneasy at best, but it is still peace.

It is, all in all, a dull existence, the daily grind and monotonous scenery broken up by only two things. One of those things – an endless cycle of pairing up and breaking it off, jealousy and recrimination, among the miners and scientists – is nothing new in the book of human experience and grows tiring for all involved. The other, however, is more awe-inspiring; a nebula, spreading like wings, occupies most of the sky visible from the moon's surface, diffuse and strange and beautiful.

It hangs there now, beautiful, sinister in light of what sprawls below it. It gives no light, only reflects, but beneath the haze of the atmospheric bubble that encloses the outpost, the bodies sprawled on the rocky ground seem to glow its colors, gold and violet, with the spilled pools and drips of their blood mirroring the black of space. And inside the building, oblivious, the lights shine and the atmosphere recycles and the replicators whir and hum quietly to themselves, waiting for orders that will never be given. The only sign that the installation has even noted the absence of the humans who inhabit it is a small red light that blinks on and off, on and off, beaming that last, desperate transmission into the stars.


	2. Through The Hourglass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kirk is reckless, Uhura hears A Noise, Scotty helps out, and Bones has a headache.

"You think I'm an idiot," Kirk said, leaning back against the wall of the lift. Spock fixed him with a dark, flat gaze and said nothing. "You think we should go back and get help."

"What I think is irrelevant, Captain." Spock's voice was infuriatingly level, and Kirk's lip quirked at the corner. He had become hyper-expressive since his daily confrontations with Spock's cool lack of emotion had become de rigueur. "The order is given and we will arrive before Starfleet is able to call us back."

"You think they'd call us back?" Kirk rubbed his knuckles along the line of his jaw and considered. They were new, yes, but they had already proven themselves once and he couldn't imagine Starfleet begrudging them this rescue mission. Then again, they were meant only to be putting the crew through their paces, and it could be argued that a more experienced crew would have better luck dealing with whatever crisis awaited.

"I think if the comms had not mysteriously failed, we would have been ordered back as soon as we altered course," Spock said. There was a touch of accusation in his voice, barely there unless you had grown accustomed to listening for it. Which, naturally, Kirk had.

"It's a legitimate failure," Kirk said, annoyed by the note of protest in his own voice. He was the captain, not Spock, and though the short circuit in long range communications had been convenient, it certainly had not been contrived by him so that he could go haring off to play the hero. It was hard to say why he so desperately needed Spock to believe that, and that fact annoyed him more than the unspoken question had.

He passed Spock, heading towards the door. It hissed open and he looked back over his shoulder, made vindictive by the doubt that Spock raised so easily in him. "We'll be at the outpost in ten hours. That should be plenty of time for you to go down to Engineering and help Mr. Scott find the source of the problem," he said, and it was less a suggestion than an order. He didn't check for Spock's reaction, preferring instead to imagine him bristling in indignation. He'd discovered a fondness for that sort of thing lately, projecting emotions onto the Vulcan, wondering what it they would look like on Spock's stiff face.

The door slid shut behind him and he straightened his jacket, conscious as he walked down the corridors of all the attention being paid to him. Most everyone on the ship was straight out of the Academy and a good portion of them had been on the ship during the incident with the Romulans. The ones who hadn't cast him admiring glances, probably figuring that if someone his age could become captain of the _Enterprise_, their own options were endless. The older members of the crew, men and women who had been members of Starfleet for years, were less impressed. A few months ago, that might have bothered him, driven him to recklessness. For the most part, though, he'd learned better than that and was, in fact, attempting to train himself into moderation in everything. It had worked thus far primarily because he'd been too busy to indulge himself.

He stepped into the turbolift, last in a group of five. They all stopped talking as soon as they caught sight of his face, standing instead in respectful silence as the lift carried them down two decks. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but Kirk had grown accustomed to the odd silences, the sideways looks of awe or irritation. Slowly, he was coming to view them as his due, which felt much better than inwardly cringing away from them. Every day, a little bit more of the boy he had been died, replaced by the man he wanted to become.

The lift stopped and he stepped out, glad to be away from the heavy silence of so many people. It got better, but never really easier. He always wanted to talk, to break the silence with a joke or casual flirtation, but he'd been advised in no uncertain terms – by both Pike and Bones – that it wasn't the captain's business to fraternize with the crew. They were his people, yes, and they should respect and like him, but they shouldn't be _friends_ with him. Kirk could accept that prohibition, but with a few modifications. He'd kept Bones around, after all, and he felt that he was inching closer and closer to something approximating real friendship with Spock.

He didn't bother to knock on the door when he reached McCoy's office, just thumbed the door panel and overrode the lock. Bones was asleep at his desk, datapad teetering dangerously at the edge. Kirk rescued it and glanced down at its contents. Schedules for medical exams. He saw his name and grimaced, tapping the entry and erasing it. He settled the pad in a more secure location on the desk and noticed one blue eye staring him down.

"Bones," he said levelly, betraying none of the faint flush of guilt that he felt. "Have a nice nap?"

"Nice enough," the doctor replied, picking up the pad and staring at it critically. "Have fun erasing your appointment?"

There was no point denying it, so Kirk shrugged. "I don't have time," he explained. "We're changing course." He explained about the distress signal and was thoroughly unsurprised to see McCoy's facial expression darken.

"You really think that's a wise idea, Jim?" he asked. He stretched and his back popped loudly. "Getting old," he muttered, then shifted gears back to the conversation at hand. "We're not really ready for that sort of thing."

"We did fine before," Kirk answered. The constant doubting of his crew's – and by extension _his_ \- relative readiness was starting to wear on him. It was a strange distress call, yes, but it was just a distress call. What could have happened, all the way out there in the middle of nowhere? Likely, it was just a malfunction, but he couldn't help thinking it would reflect well on him.

"We got lucky before," Bones countered, standing and rubbing the back of his neck. "You can't expect that kind of outcome on every mission. We should turn around and let a better equipped crew deal with it."

"We're the only ones in this part of the galaxy," Kirk pointed out, not bothering to hide the irate tone of his voice. "And if we run away from trouble every time it shows up, we're never going to get any experience." It was a valid point, he felt, but Bones sighed and shook his head.

"Whatever you think," he muttered. "They made you captain, not me. But if we get court martialed for this, I'm blaming it all on you."

"I expect no less from my best friend," Kirk answered, with only a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

***  
As Alice said, curiouser and curiouser.

Uhura had heard plenty of things in her time with Starfleet, some less pleasant than others. The training to man the comm on a Federation starship wasn't just learning to press buttons and understand other languages. There were other things, harder things. She'd been systematically desensitized to the sounds of people in distress, taught to pick out the relevant details from the often garbled messages that came in over her earpiece. But the message they'd received today was something entirely out of her comfort zone, something so strange that there was no place for it in the rigid mental classification that she used to keep her languages straight.

Naturally, this meant that she was drawn to it, focusing her confusion and anxiety into the productive channel of deciphering exactly what was happening in the message. She sat at her station on the bridge and played it over and over, parsing the sounds, separating them out and trying to make sense of them. There were human voices, she was sure of it. They were raised, reaching that timbre and pitch that indicates distress. (Interestingly, that distress pitch is one that many species share, and it isn't limited to sentient species either; not exactly her specialty, but Uhura couldn't help but be intrigued by it.)

It was the roaring that she couldn't understand, that watery thunderous sound that very nearly drowned out the sound of the voices. When her replacement came to relieve her of duty, she made a copy of the call to take back to her quarters, where she hunched over her desk and listened over and over. Her fingers drummed against the surface of the desk as she tried to mimic the pattern of vibration in the sound. She downloaded sounds of water rushing to fill a vacuum, of buildings falling, of ships crashing, anything that she could think of but none of them even came close to approximating that chilling cacophony.

She realized, halfway through manipulating a visualization of the noise, that she hadn't had anything to eat in well over twelve hours. Grimacing, she stood up. Though it was tempting to simply fetch something from the replicator and stay in her quarters all night, she knew that her friends were worried about her. Ever since the mess with Spock – which had been her decision and hers alone, though of course he had been nothing but accommodating – they'd been irritatingly worried about her, particularly if she decided to take a meal in her room.

A shower first, though, and a fresh uniform and a little makeup to hide the lines of frustration around her dark eyes. She hated it when people assumed, and lately it seemed as though that was all they wanted to do. Perhaps that was partially her fault, but it didn't stop her from wanting to snap whenever someone asked in that oh-so-concerned voice how she was holding up.

The cafeteria was, thankfully, not crowded and contained none of the men and women who had taken to fawning over her. They were mostly other comm officers, a few of the security guys, and one engineer who looked more like she should be working as a florist or an injured bunny rehabilitation specialist or something like that. It galled Uhura to have a wispy thing floating around her like dandelion fluff, worrying about her mental and emotional health, but there was something sweet about it, too, and she couldn't bring herself to shoo Helena away. She was too sweet and, admittedly, the attention if not the focus of it was gratifying.

Uhura sat down at a small table and stared at the plate of food in front of her. Usually, the fare provided in the mess was fairly good, but right now it all looked entirely unappetizing. She pushed the vegetables around on her plate and sighed, then surreptitiously tucked the earpiece back into her ear and played the message again. And again. And several more times, while her carrots grew cold and her water grew warm and everything else just sort of sat on the plate and languished.

Between listenings, in the momentary silence before she started the transmission again, she noticed that someone had, in fact, invited himself to sit down at her table and was currently staring at her with a bright, interested expression on his face. It took her a moment to gather her wandering thoughts, but she was able to put a name to the face quickly enough. "Mr. Scott," she said, raising her eyebrows and removing the earpiece. "Can I help you?"

"Just thought you looked lonely," the engineer answered, shrugging. "And you can call me Scotty. Everyone does."

"Scotty, then," Uhura said. She smiled, but it was polite not friendly, a fact which did not seem to faze Scotty at all. "I'm sorry, but I'm very busy at the moment."

"With that distress call?" His face was cheerfully blank, but there was a bright, almost teasing intelligence in his eyes. Uhura frowned sharply, her hand hovering protectively over the datapad that contained her copy of the transmission.

"You heard about it?" she asked.

"Lass, everyone's heard about it." Scotty speared a piece of meat and tucked it neatly into his mouth. Uhura watched him chew with a concentration that bordered on painful, but he just chewed and smiled and blinked his eyes peacefully until he was done. He started to reach for his drink but Uhura tapped a fingernail on the table pointedly and he sighed. "We changed course, didn't we? Everyone's talking about why, and bridge crew went off duty three hours ago. Story's had time to spread."

Had it been that long? Uhura glanced at the clock on her datapad and grimaced. It had. She should have been asleep already; there was too much to do lately and very little time in which to rest. But if she had been intrigued by the noise before, she was fascinated now. The idea that someone else might hear it, that someone else might figure it out before she does, was unnaturally upsetting. She pushed her dinner aside entirely, leaning forward and fixing her gaze on a somewhat surprised Scotty.

"What have you heard about it?" she demanded. She sounded crazy, even she could hear it, so she softened her tone, tried to take some of the intensity out of her face. Scotty raised his eyebrows and took another bite of his meal, considering, and she did her best not to reach out and shake him.

"Dunno, not much," he said finally. "Heard there was a distress call. Kinda funny, but no one really seems to want to say why." His eyes narrowed and his lips curled up, and suddenly he looked deviously sly. For the first time she could see the frightening level of intelligence that he was rumored to possess, and she suddenly liked him considerably more than she had. "Bet you know, though. Bet that's what you were listening to…"

"Maybe," she said, tapping her nails against the table, debating. "How good are you at keeping things to yourself?"

"Crap," he answered, flashing a crooked grin which she couldn't help but return. "But for you, I might be able to make an exception."

"I'll hold you to that," she murmured, passing him the earpiece and thumbing play. There was something deeply gratifying in the fact that he did not blanch at the sounds, but instead leaned forward and fixed her with bright, curious eyes.

"Now what in the hell is that?" he breathed, reaching out and gripping her wrist. "That's just bloody awful. Like a lot of water fell in on them."

"That's what I thought," Uhura answered. It felt surprisingly good to be discussing it with someone; she didn't even feel the need to shake off his hand. "But it's not. I've run frequency comparisons and there's no way it's water. It's too…"

"Thick," Scotty filled in, staring down at the table. Gratified and mystified, Uhura pulled away from him and folded her arms across her chest.

"You're kind of a know-it-all, aren't you?" she asked. Scotty looked up, eyes widening in surprise, then his expression collapsed into sheepishness and he shrugged his shoulders.

"You get a good ear when you listen for variations in the frequency of a running warp engine," he said.

"I'll bet," she said, cocking her head. She realized, with a little shock of surprise, that she was flirting with the chief engineer. Clearing her throat, she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and arranged her features into as serious an expression as she could manage. "So, any thoughts?"

"Dunno," Scotty shrugged. "What pours like water and sounds _kind of_ like water, but… isn't?"

"What _could_ it be?" she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "There's nothing in this system, just a lot of rocks and sand."

Their faces lit up simultaneously, and Uhura fairly erupted out of her chair, snatching up her datapad and plucking the earpiece out of Scotty's unresisting hand. "I have to go," she said, breathless with irritation and excitement. How had she not put it together sooner? Of _course_ it was sand! "I have to run comparisons…"

"We, ah… we have really good screens in engineering," Scotty offered. "And the sound quality…" He let out a sharp breath, shook his head. "Well. You won't find it that good anywhere _else_ on the ship is all I'm saying." Uhura stared at him for a moment, then smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

"Yeah, if you don't have anything better to do," she said. It would definitely be the weirdest pseudo date she'd ever been on, but Scotty looked so sheepishly pleased by the situation that she couldn't bring herself to be annoyed by it.

"Can't think of a better way to spend my off-duty hours," he answered, offering his arm. After a moment's hesitation, she took it, though if anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen that she, not he, lead the way.

***

Leonard McCoy wished – desperately, fervently, whole-heartedly – that he was drunk right now, or at least on his way. Spock had that effect on him; after some internal debate, he'd determined that it was because, like his ex-wife, Spock possessed the uncanny ability to say just the right thing at exactly the wrong time. Without the benefit of a cathartic screaming match afterwards, Bones was left with a load of pent up aggression and nothing to do with it but drown it.

Now, however, the urge was somewhat lessened. For the first time, they were fully on the same page. "I agree it's reckless," he said, massaging his temples, "but it's also an order. Unless you're planning a mutiny, we don't have much choice." Spock's face remained impassive save the slight quirk of one eyebrow, but McCoy got the impression that he had, in fact, considered that course of action and discarded it as infeasible. The crew was devoted to Jim, almost fanatically, and though it was easy enough to see why – the kid had charisma to spare – sometimes Bones wished it was just a touch harder for Jim to get his way.

"I am aware of that, Doctor," Spock answered. "Nevertheless, it is likely that we will encounter résistance when we reach the Iod system."

Bones glanced at his clock. Two hours left. "You think it was Klingons?"

"Of course." There was that eyebrow again. Bones fought the urge to reach over and snatch it off Spock's face. "Any other conclusion is too far-fetched to consider. And although it is illogical to suspect that the Klingons would require multiple Birds of Prey to dispatch a single outpost, we must assume that there are enough of them there to pose a threat to the _Enterprise_."

"Because," Bones supplied grimly, "there's no reason to attack that place unless they're using it as a jumping off point for raids."

"Correct," Spock said, and Bones could have sworn there was a note of approval in the Vulcan's voice. "Therefore, we should prepare for the worst."

And now the truth of this little meeting became clear. Spock had come to warn him to expect heavy casualties. A flare of irritation rose up inside him and he ground his teeth audibly, an action which did nothing but aggravate the tension headache he'd been battling since they'd altered course. It was the gall of it that annoyed him the most; Spock had always come across as an unbearable know-it-all to McCoy, but to come into his office and drop hints about potential danger was too much. As if McCoy couldn't see the upcoming danger! As if he hadn't already prepared the rest of the medical staff to receive casualties!

"Doctor?" Spock's voice broke through his anger. "Are you well?" Was that concern? McCoy narrowed his eyes. Did that count as an emotion? Probably, and anyway there was a difference between concern for friends and concern for the man who can patch up your sucking chest wound. Bones grimaced, hitched his shoulders.

"It's a headache," he said. "Nothing serious. Jim drives me to them on a regular basis."

"Understood." Spock's lips compressed slightly and he rose. "May I?"

Bones studied his outstretched hands suspiciously. "May you what?" he demanded.

"Help," Spock answered. Seeing the wariness on McCoy's face, he elaborated further. "Vulcan and human physiology is remarkably similar in some aspects, Doctor. I can at least ease your headache."

Bones grunted, then nodded grudgingly. What could it hurt. Certainly couldn't make the damned headache worse. Spock made his way around the desk that separated them and stood behind Bones, close enough that the doctor could feel the heat radiating from him. Slim, warm fingers spidered across his temples, cheekbones, and jaw line, pressing and stroking, and it was somewhat strange until the pain began to melt away. He made a soft, pleased sound in his throat and Spock backed away.

"Better?" he asked. Bones sighed, rolled his neck.

"Much," he confessed. "You have to teach me that one. Save me a lot of medicine." Spock inclined his head and Bones managed a faint smile. It wasn't much, but at least he didn't feel like pouring a flask-worth of whiskey into his coffee anymore. Amazing.

"You will be on the bridge when we arrive?" Spock asked, clasping his hands behind his back as he paused at the door.

"Always," Bones answered, standing. As chief medical officer, he probably ought to have stayed in Sickbay, but he liked to be on hand in case of disaster, and the bridge was typically hit the hardest. Besides that, he was nosy.

Spock hesitated, then nodded sharply. "I will leave you to your preparations then, Doctor." And he turned and walked out the door, leaving McCoy alone in the office, shaking his head.

"That boy is not right in the head," he murmured, picking up a datapad and drawing a deep breath. There was a lot to do before they dropped out of warp, and not enough time in which to do it.


	3. Discoveries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scotty gets a surprise, Uhura hears something new, Bones is cantankerous, and they find out what happened to the miners.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to flatbear for the beta on this chapter! Any remaining mistakes are mine, not hers!

Kirk had the away team put together long before they dropped out of warp, and though there were many who chafed at their exclusion – Uhura chief among them – Montgomery Scott did not count himself as one of their number. It wasn't cowardice, or anything approaching it; he would have suited up and tagged along without complaint, were it required of him. It was just that he enjoyed the company of the ship far too much to want to leave. The hum and purr of the engines had become as natural to him as his own heartbeat, to the point that when he was anywhere other than Engineering, he could hear the lack of them as a sort of thunderous ringing in his ears.

Besides, there was plenty to do onboard. Things to calibrate and suchlike and it had nothing at all to do with a very pretty Communications officer who was also being left behind. Even though she'd stayed far past the time required to identify her mystery sound – a colossal volume of sand, overlaid with some sort of interference that he hadn't quite been able to name just yet. Even though when she smiled sometimes, just every once in a while, she looked so sad and tired that he had been coming up with crackbrained schemes to make her laugh. Even though she was, easily, the loveliest thing he'd seen in a very long while, and easy to talk to on top of that.

It didn't _have_ to be odd. She'd been out of her relationship with Spock for a good four months now, at least a month longer than they'd been together in the first place . Scotty didn't pretend to know all of the details. For one, it was none of his business, and for another, even the extensive Enterprise rumor machine had no idea why they'd' split. Spock, of course, displayed no reaction one way or the other, and Uhura flat our refused to talk about it. She hadn't requested a transfer though, so it couldn't have been that bad.

All of which Scotty pondered as the ship dropped out of warp and the engines cycled down. He was so focused on sorting out the propriety of the entire situation that he didn't notice the two security officers until they were almost on top of him, at which point he made an extremely undignified squawking noise.

"Help you gentlemen?" he asked, attempting to regain some small measure of poise. The taller of the two bit his lips, suppressing laughter.

"Captain wants to see you, sir," the other said.

"Oh," Scotty answered. "Damn."

***

"This isn't fair," Uhura murmured. It was difficult to keep her voice down; the injustice of not being allowed on the mission still rankled. She didn't want Kirk to hear, though. This conversation was for Spock's ears only.

"Have you spoken with the captain?" Spock enquired. Uhura growled, shifting out of the way of a tech. Spock accepted the oxygen hook-up and there was a brief lull in the conversation as she slapped his gloved hands away from the tank on his back, screwing the hoses on and checking the tank pressure to save him the trouble of contorting to see.

"He won't give me a reason. He just keeps saying no." Had it been any other captain, she might have suspected some misguided attempt to protect her. She knew Kirk, though, knew he respected her competence. "Can't you talk to him?"

Spock finished adjusting the straps on his spacesuit and glanced at the teleporter pad, eyebrow quirked in a way that she'd learned to identify as disapproval. "I do not think that anything I say will alter his decision, Lieutenant." That stung. When had she been reduced in his eyes from Nyota to Lieutenant? Their split had been painful – for her at least; she didn't pretend to know Spock's mind – but not acrimonious. Or so she'd believed.

Hurt, she drifted to the periphery of the group and attempted to puzzle out why that one word had thrown her so completely. Around her, techs bustled back and forth, checking suits and prepping the away team on safety considerations. McCoy stood by, arms folded across his chest, deep in some heated discussion with the captain. Probably yet another argument about the use of the spacesuits; Kirk had opposed them and McCoy, equally stubborn, had insisted. Plague, he'd said, was a possibility necessitating a closed and filtered air system, and it was clear that Kirk still chafed at the restriction. She watched them blankly, a single vertical line marring her forehead.

There was a commotion at the door, and Uhura turned. Scotty bustled into the room and something inside her unwound slightly. She liked Scotty. Things were _easy_ with him. He caught her eyes, and his face erupted into a massive, genuine smile.

"There you are, lass," he called, moving towards her. "I was listening to your message again and I think I found something." This sudden, grinding shift in her train of thought was welcome, and Uhura greeted his news perhaps a little more enthusiastically than she might have otherwise.

"Found what?" she demanded, grabbing his hand and yanking him away from his escort. Color crept into his pale face and his smile took on a decidedly goofy cast. Uhura noticed, but didn't really process the change. She was accustomed to men – and, every so often, women – reacting strongly to her presence and usually didn't give it any thought.

"Um. Well." Scotty glanced down and Uhura realized she was still holding onto his hand. Smiling faintly, she released it. He cleared his throat. "I was separating out the different sounds into different layers, you know, so maybe we could figure out what the interference was, and I found—"

"Scotty!" Kirk's voice cut through their conversation and they both turned. "Good, you're here! Suit up, you're coming with us."

"I… am?" Scotty looked at her helplessly, and before she could ask what he'd been about to say, he was swept away by an impatient tech crew and stuffed into a suit. A flare of anger burst in Uhura's chest and she crushed it. There was no point in getting mad at Scotty. He was clearly no more thrilled by this than she was, and shoved away one of the techs as she started to lower his helmet.

"Uhura!" he called, and she experienced a sudden flush of bemused embarrassment as at least half the room turned to stare at her. "Just go down to my terminal in Engineering and listen to the fifth layer. You might be able to make more of it than I could." The tech said something to him, softly, and he turned to her without missing a beat. "Yes, all right, get on with it, then. Pushy." And then he was sealed away and nudged up onto the teleporter pad and someone said _engage_.

The energy drained out of the room as the last shimmer faded from the pad, redirected to flow down to the bridge, where they would be coordinating the efforts of the away team. Uhura shifted out of the way, pressing her shoulders against the cool bulkhead and waiting for everyone to clear the room. She wasn't on shift again for another twenty minutes, just enough time to hurry down to Engineering and at least transfer Scotty's work to her datapad. It would give her something to think about instead of fuming over her exclusion from the mission.

The turbolift was blessedly abandoned; most people were cramming in a shower or a meal before they went on shift, and she was able to surround herself in relative silence until she reached Engineering. Most everyone ignored her, absorbed in their own tasks, but halfway to Scotty's terminal (which she had assumed was the one they'd used earlier) she heard someone calling her name. Briefly, she closed her eyes, contemplating pretending that she hadn't heard, but a slim arm looped through her own and she pasted a smile onto her face as she turned to face Helena.

"Nyota!" she chirped. "What are you doing here?" It was a shame the girl was so sweet. Uhura would have loved a reason to tell her off or actively avoid her, but the problem with Helena was that she just really, genuinely wanted to help everyone. It wasn't her fault that she was mildly irritating and couldn't hold a candle to Gaila in the matter of advice about men.

"I came to pick up something that Mr. Scott left for me," Uhura answered calmly. She hoped desperately that Helena wouldn't pursue the subject, but it was in vain.

"Really?" Helena's gray eyes grew huge and her voice dropped to almost a whisper, so that Uhura had to lean down to make out what she was saying. "Are you two dating now?"

"No!" Even to her, the denial had come out too strong and too fast, and Uhura flushed in irritation at the knowing smile that Helena gave her. "No," she repeated firmly. "It's about the sound analysis we were working on."

"Oh! The distress call." Helena changed direction, tugging Uhura along with her. "Yeah, he had it over here. We were all helping." Uhura shot her a surprised look, but allowed herself to be lead. Helena beamed proudly. "I heard the third layer."

Bemused, Uhura trailed Helena until they reached a terminal tucked back near the turbines. It was somewhat isolated from the noise by a shielded metal wall, but Uhura couldn't imagine anyone hearing _anything_ in this cacophony, much less being able to separate out layers of sound. Helena gestured for her to take the chair, and Uhura sat, staring at the unfamiliar controls in front of her. Helena handed her two earpieces.

"One cancels the noise from the turbines," she said. Uhura tucked them both in, one in each ear, and the noise instantly faded. She smiled up at Helena, who looked pleased. "Mr. Scott came up with it. We all wear them when we work in here. The pitch that the earpiece plays cancels out the pitch of the turbines. He's kind of a genius." Uhura studied her face closely, wondering if maybe Helena was pining for her boss, but all she saw was shining admiration. A twinge of jealousy died before it was really born, and Uhura opted to ignore it.

"He said to listen to the fifth layer," she said, and Helena's smile faded slowly. She hesitated a moment, clearly reluctant, then nodded and reached down to fiddle with the dials in front of Uhura, fingers flying over the keys as she pulled up the relevant files.

"This one's weird," Helena warned her, stepping back. There was an almost superstitious fear on her face, and Uhura's heart thundered in her ears. Helena was making her nervous, the way her finger hesitated over the last button, the way she drew a slow breath before pressing it. In retrospect, Uhura would realize that she had under-reacted; she should have been terrified.

It wasn't a particularly clean edit, but Uhura couldn't really fault Scotty for that. This wasn't exactly his job, and the fact that he'd done it at all was mind-blowing. She leaned forward as she listened, straining to hear past the static and mess, wondering what in the world she was even listening for. Helena touched her shoulder, nodded slightly. _Patience._ Uhura drew a breath and waited, and after approximately thirty seconds of white noise, she heard it. It was faint but unmistakable. "Helena," she breathed. "That's a person…"

Ever since the call had come in, they'd all been treating it as a wordless message of distress; the fact that it actually contained a human being's voice changed the entire game. Whatever he or she said could have immediate implications for the away team, and Uhura leaned forward again, tension in every line of her body. The words were muffled, broken. She could make out a syllable here and there, the percussive of a hard consonant. It was impossible to tell exactly what language the mystery person was speaking, but she was able to rule out several based on pitch and the sound of what vowels she could pick out. It wasn't Klingon, that much she was sure of, but it easily could have been Terran or Vulcan. Just as she was beginning to grow impatient with the lack of clarity on the recording, one word broke through the static.

"…_rising_…" the voice said, and it was impossible to miss the panic infused in the word. Uhura recoiled, then drew a deep breath and removed the earpieces. The returning roar of the turbines was a welcome intrusion.

"Can you do me a favor, Helena?" she murmured. "Download that onto my datapad." She handed the pad over and Helena, after shooting her a sympathetic look, did as she asked.

"Are you all right?" the slight engineer asked. "Do you want to go get some tea?"

"Can't," Uhura answered, taking the pad and forcing a smile. "I'm late for my shift." Helena's face fell, and without really knowing why, Uhura hurried to reassure her. "But I'll find you when I'm off and we can talk then. Deal?" Helena beamed.

"Deal."

***

Bones stumbled a little as the world resolidified around him and he thought, not for the first or the last time, that he absolutely despised teleporters. Everyone around him was already in motion, gathering around Jim to receive their orders, but the doctor took a moment to shake off his confusion before joining the group. To hide his unsteadiness, he spun in a slow circle, taking in the outpost.

They'd arrived on the southern inside edge of the atmospheric dome that covered the installation. The dome was intact, a fact which they had verified with sensors before beaming down, so the suits they wore weren't entirely necessary. However, as a doctor and a relatively paranoid individual, Bones had been forced to insist on the suits; there was no telling what they would find down here and plague was as likely as Klingon invasions.

That fear, at least, seemed unfounded. He took a few steps to the side, peered around the edge of one of the buildings. There was no evidence of a struggle that he could see, no guard posted anywhere. In fact, the entire place was eerily quiet. To his right, Jim outlined the plan of attack for canvassing the place, and Bones listened with one ear, shifting back and forth in an attempt to see the rest of the outpost. It wasn't particularly large; the building that they were currently standing next to was a barracks, big enough to accommodate fifteen, though Starfleet's idea of accommodating was room enough for your shoes and a sneeze and that was about it. Beyond that, occupying the eastern quarter of the dome, was a sort of Quonset hut covering the mining equipment. Bones didn't pretend to understand how the equipment extracted minerals from the soil, but he knew that periodically, they picked up and moved the entire installation so that they could drill in another location. This was the fifth or sixth since the outpost's beginning, according to the illustrious Mr. Spock, though Bones doubted that had any bearing on the problem at hand.

The northern sector of the dome was occupied by the research lab, the smallest building in the place. There was a small shuttle parked next to it; just by eyeballing it, Bones could tell that it wasn't meant for much more than the odd planet-hopping. It would get them down to Iod II well enough, but not much farther than that. He glanced over at the group; Jim was still lecturing them, assigning duties and the like, and he evidently hadn't noticed the lack of Bones's presence. Rolling his eyes, the doctor took a few more steps sideways, his line of sight clearing the mining shack. His heart leaped into his throat.

"Jim," he said, then again, louder. "_Jim_!" The captain stopped his speech and looked irritably towards Bones. Bones stood stock still and just stared, praying that what he saw wasn't what he thought it was. "I think you'd better come over here…"

Jim broke free of the group and stomped over to Bones, switching to a private channel and speaking as low as he was able while still being heard. "Dammit, Bones, you're supposed to be over here with everyone else, not wandering off on your own! There's a good possibility that we're going to meet with some resistance here, and I need everyone on the same page."

"I'm thinking this might be a little bit more… pressing," Bones answered sourly, pointing in the direction of the mining hut. Just visible around the edge of the building was an outflung hand. Enough of the arm showed that they could see the sleeve of a grey Starfleet jumpsuit. Jim whistled low and gestured for the others to join them.

"All right, ladies and gentlemen," he said, as the others approached. "It looks like this has turned into an investigation instead of a rescue mission. I want everyone to be extra careful now. We don't know what we're going to find. Barkley, go with the doctor to check out the body, then join us in the barracks." He looked around the group to make sure everyone understood, then gestured for them to begin. Before Bones walked away, Jim rested a gloved hand on his shoulder. "Hey. Be careful over there. I think it's probably safe to assume they're all dead, but we don't know if what killed them is still around."

"I can handle it," Bones answered grimly, turning away and falling in behind the broad form of Barkley. It had been kind of a chore to find the guy a space suit, that's how big he was, and Bones couldn't bring himself to be frightened of anything when he had Barkley in front of him. The massive security officer rounded the edge of the mining hut, phaser drawn, then gestured Bones forward.

"Sir…" He didn't finish the sentence and he didn't have to. Bones stepped up next to him and froze, staring in horror at the sight that the building had mostly hidden.

"My god," he breathed, taking a tentative step forward. Tucked into the lee of the building, concealed by the walls and the shadows, were at least five corpses. They sprawled in puddles of sticky blood, stiff with rigor mortis, and Bones was suddenly very glad that no one else had come with them. Barkley was making retching sounds and backing away; Bones didn't even want to imagine what the rest of the away team would have done.

"Get a hold of yourself, ensign," he ordered absently. It wasn't in his nature to flex his authority too often, but it seemed to help Barkley. He straightened, drew a deep breath.

"Sorry, sir," he said, clearly struggling to keep his voice level. "It surprised me."

"Mmm." Bones stepped forward and peered down at the closest body. Even with his professional detachment switched on, it was hard not to back away in horror. The face, crusted in drying blood, was frozen in a rictus of fear. Lips peeled back, teeth showing, brow beetled together, but there was one thing wrong, one thing missing. "My god," Bones breathed, crouching down and hesitantly touching the dead man's face to reassure himself that it was real. "His eyes…"

"Sir?" Barkley came up behind him, hesitant and obviously uncomfortable.

"His eyes," Bones repeated, rocking back on his heels and staring at the dead man's face, dazed. "They're gone."


	4. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Scotty stares too long, they almost find a survivor, Bones performs his examination, and Uhura realizes something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to flatbear for beta once again! Sorry this one took forever; it's been a rough couple of weeks.

It had been made abundantly clear to him that his sole purpose on this away mission was to verify that the life support systems of the outpost were still in working order. No tinkering with the mining equipment, no optimizing the output of anything, no playing, no recalibrating, just plain _no_. Which was a bit insulting, really; he wasn't a child and was perfectly capable of focusing on a task. Even if it was a ridiculously easy task that anyone could have done and which certainly didn't require the attention of the Chief Engineer. Still, he'd done it. What else was there? Mutiny? Defiant, he'd done some re-routing of the energy flow, strengthening the shield which protected the place. They'd thank him for it if the Klingons attacked.

"Sir," he said finally, a good ten minutes after ascertaining that life support was still active. "Seems we'll be just fine to take off the helmets." Kirk nodded, then turned to Spock. They all knew that checking the atmosphere had been a formality; Kirk wouldn't even have ordered the suits had the doctor not insisted. The ostentatious systems check had been his own little dig. Still, you could never be too careful; the shield tended to distort readings and Scotty felt somewhat better for having checked.

"Thank you, Mister Scott," the captain answered absently. "Spock?" Scotty's attention turned to the Vulcan first officer, who was intently focused on a tricorder.

"I am not detecting any known contagions, Captain," he said. Kirk started to speak, a triumphant light in his eyes, and Spock overrode him. "That does not, however, indicate that there are no _unknown_ contagions." Scotty paused halfway through taking off his helmet and slowly fastened the clasps again. Kirk made a soft noise of irritation, but accepted the advice with a sharp nod.

The door hissed open to reveal the doctor, who strode in as though he owned the place. A wave of consternation rippled through the room; McCoy's expression behind the faceplate of his helmet was grim. His hands dripped blood onto the white floor.

"Bones," Kirk was at the doctor's side immediately, and McCoy waved him away.

"It's not mine," he said, gruff and unhappy. "There are a bunch of corpses out there, Jim." He looked around the room, taking in the ring of horrified faces, and switched to a private channel. Scotty could still see his face, though, and the word his lips formed was unmistakable.

_Mutilated_.

His stomach dropped and he leaned back against the panel he'd been working on. They had all expected to find a catastrophe of some sort, he more than most. He'd listened to that recording over and over, separated out the layers, heard the garbled words. _Something_ was going on down here, but mutilation? No, he hadn't anticipated that at all.

As he struggled to wrap his mind around the implications of the doctor's discovery, he felt a shift in the vibrations that hummed up through the floor. It was lower, rhythmic. Frowning, he turned back to the panel and tapped a series of keys. These damned gloves made him feel awkward, added an extra second or two to his typing time. By the time he'd pulled up the relevant read-out, the captain was already turning to him, brow furrowed.

"Mister Scott?" Kirk snapped. "What is that?"

"Mining equipment, sir," Scotty answered, frowning. It didn't appear to be an automatic cycle; someone had actually activated the equipment. His fingers did a clumsy dance across the keys as he struggled to pinpoint where the on command had originated. "Someone in the mining shed turned it on."

There was a moment of silence, then the away team sprung into action. "Mister Scott, I need you to shut that equipment off," Kirk said, slipping perfectly into his element. "Bones, take Barkley and collect the bodies; have them beamed to Sickbay, then join up with me." McCoy snorted, but gestured to Barkley as he made his way out of the room. "Mister Spock, take half the team, sweep the rest of the installation. The rest of you," and here he paused to indicate the rest of the away team, "come with me. We're going to find out who's here with us."

There was a great deal of movement, a constant low murmur, and then Scotty was abruptly left alone. Miffed that he hadn't been assigned a bodyguard, he took approximately thirty seconds longer than he needed to turn off the equipment. No one would notice but him, but such tiny pettiness sometimes helped him get through the day. Sighing, he locked the controls to the panel he'd been working from, then stepped out of the barracks.

It was quiet, but not eerily so; the dome emitted a low hum that filled his head and reminded him, in a very small way, of the thrum of the engines back on _Enterprise_. There was a weird stink in the air, though, and he tried diligently not to figure out what it was. He took a few steps, boots scuffing against dirt, and his eyes were drawn up.

The horizon of the little moon was filled by the nebula, graceful and strange, its colors diluted by the haze of the atmospheric field surrounding the installation. Even so, it was beautiful and Scotty stared up at it. It wasn't often that he allowed himself to appreciate the intricate beauties of space. Mostly, for him, it was the down and dirty stuff, the breached hulls and the cracked dilithium crystals and the damaged warp cores, which was all beautiful in its own way but which couldn't hold a candle to the things that space did on its own. So he paused for a second and allowed his eyes to be drawn in by the whorls and fans that the ionized gasses traced there in the vastness of space.

He stood there for a long time. There was no knowing _how_ long, really, but he could feel the minutes ticking past, one after the other as he stared up into the sky. Back and forth his eyes travelled, in and out, closer to the center each time. He felt as though he were dreaming, helpless to stop himself from looking but knowing that there was something dire in the nebula, something dark and strange that was tugging him in like a spider tugs in a fly. He struggled with himself, trying to calm down by reasoning that it was only a nebula, circumstances had simply made him jumpy. But the closer he got to where he was going, the more panic rose up in him, some instinctive animal urge to just _look away_.

"Mister Scott?"

The questioning voice drew him hard out of his trance-like state and for a moment, his eyes seemed to vibrate in their sockets. He threw up quietly, retching into his helmet and holding his breath until the suit's clean up function vacuumed the mess away and puffed fresh air into his face. No muss, no fuss, but he could still taste the bile at the back of his throat, and his stomach felt like a rock.

"Yes?" he answered, turning gingerly. It was one of the science officers and, beneath her helmet, she was a sickly shade of green.

"Captain wants everyone together," she said. Scotty drew a deep breath, then gestured for the girl to lead on. Unnoticed behind them, the nebula flickered, then began to slowly, subtly rearrange itself.

***

He should have listened.

To Spock and Bones, mostly, but also to himself. As soon as they'd dropped out of warp, he'd had misgivings. Just looking down at the planet and its moons had given him a creepy sort of feeling that was difficult to pinpoint. He could remember thinking, though, that this was too big for just one ship, just one crew. Still, Jim Kirk's pride was a difficult beast and there'd been no time to conquer it. He would simply have to make the best of an increasingly strange situation.

An initial scan of the outpost had shown no life forms but, as Spock had pointed out, that did not mean there was nothing there. Shields of the type that they employed to generate atmosphere were notorious for skewing scanner readings, to the point that if there was one in place it was standard Starfleet protocol to disregard the readings entirely. So yes, perhaps he had been hoping to find everyone at the installation alive and well, victims of a scare but nothing more. Instead, he was faced with mutilated corpses and now… this.

"What do you make of it, Mister Spock?" he asked. He, Spock, and McCoy were on a private channel; the rest of the crew had been sent out of the room and were congregating just outside.

"I believe the doctor is more qualified to answer that question than I am, Captain," Spock replied. Jim could almost hear Bones grinding his teeth. Any other time, he would have smiled. It was a hard expression to muster just now, though.

"Bones?" he asked quietly. There was a moment of silence, then McCoy sighed and answered.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you, Jim. She's recently dead. Probably the one who turned on the mining equipment. If I was to hazard a guess, I'd say she did it because she wanted our attention." Bones sighed and Jim forced himself to keep looking. She deserved that much, at least. "Can't say what killed her without actually examining her, but I'll take a wild guess and say it was blood loss, same as the ones we found outside."

"Thank you, Doctor," Jim said, cutting him off. He didn't want to hear any more about it, at least not verbally. Reading McCoy's reports was one thing; they were precise and cold and contained relevant details with no emotion attached. Hearing them was entirely another, though the language was essentially the same. There was a pathos in McCoy's voice that was difficult to listen to and Kirk had other things on his mind.

"We'll have the body beamed into Sickbay," he said. Bones made a soft noise, as though he wanted to protest, but it subsided and he merely nodded. Kirk was sympathetic; it wasn't going to be easy for the doctor to return to the ship and find Sickbay full of bodies. Chapel was probably cursing them both up and down, but things were moving faster than the young captain would like to admit.

Still, he held off on the order for a moment and the three of them stood, looking at the body. She'd been young. Not really pretty, but striking in a way that reminded Kirk of his mother. There were hard lines around the woman's mouth, grim determination in the set of her jaw, as though she had only given in to death after a powerful struggle. Her hand splayed against the wall, reaching for what Spock had theorized was her last attempt at communication. They hadn't been able to make any sense of it, and it was a gruesome sight, but Kirk forced himself to look, and not only to look, but to internalize whatever message she'd been trying to communicate.

Finally, unaccountably weary, he turned away and switched back to an open channel. "De Soto, prepare to be beamed back to the ship," he said. The crew member in question, a perpetual ensign and happy to remain that way, stepped into the room and studiously refused to look at the body. "This one has to go back to Sickbay as well. Once she's delivered, collect Ensign Barkley and return to the surface to assist with recovery efforts." De Soto's expression wavered very slightly, but she nodded crisply and went to stand next to the body. _Good crew_, Kirk thought, pleased. _I've got a hell of a good crew_.

"Think I'll go with her, if you don't need me anymore," Bones said. He was moving across the floor before he'd even finished speaking, and Kirk couldn't bring himself to contradict the doctor. It was hard enough for Bones when one person died; thus far on this mission, they'd racked up a body count of six and Kirk got the sinking feeling that there would be more.

"Contact me as soon as you have an idea what happened to these people," he said quietly. Bones nodded, and then he and De Soto and the body shimmered out of view, back up into the safety of the ship. Kirk stared at the place they had been until the afterimages of the transporter beams vanished from his vision. He glanced one last time at the mess the girl had left, then turned to organize new search parties.

Behind him, the woman's blood dried on the wall, scrawled in a messy shape that vaguely resembled an eye with a sweeping, desperate X through its middle.

***

Chapel met him in the transporter room looking tired and sad. Bones imagined that he looked much the same, and he squeezed her shoulder as she fell into step beside him. They didn't speak until they were in the turbolift, and it was Chapel who broke the silence.

"I put them in the recovery room," she said. Bones nodded, tried not to wince. It was really the only place _for_ them; you couldn't have dead bodies lying around the main examination room in Sickbay. The thought of all of those mutilated corpses lying in a room designed to house those patients that he had saved disgusted him on a fundamental level. Judging by Chapel's expression, she felt the same way. "What are they doing here, Doctor?"

"The captain wants us to examine the bodies," he answered dully. "Find out what killed them."

"I'll tell you what killed them," Chapel snapped, and Bones was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. "They're covered in blood and missing body parts, Leonard." There were tears trembling in her eyes, about to spill over, and Bones wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"I know," he said. And he did. He hadn't ever met any of these people, wouldn't have recognized them from Adam if he saw them on the street. He didn't even know their names; they had run DNA tests, matched the corpses with their Starfleet records. Everyone on the outpost had one, thankfully, as it was technically operated by Starfleet. That part of the job, at least, had been easy. This lack of familiarity was almost worse, birthing in him a deep depression that no one on board knew these people, that they would go unmourned until they returned to Earth.

Chapel drew a deep breath and nodded, leaning against him briefly then pulling away. By the time the door hissed open, she was back to her capable self. "Shall we?" she said. Bones nodded, allowing her to lead the way. He ignored the sympathetic looks, the half-spoken questions. Any issues that had arisen in Sickbay during his absence could wait. There were more important things at hand. Chapel clearly felt the same, shouldering her way through anyone slow enough to stay in her path and sealing the door behind them as Bones stepped into the recovery room.

They stood in silence for a while, and Bones wished that he'd snuck into his office before attempting to face this. A nip of whiskey would have fortified him at least a little. No time now, though; Chapel was uncovering the first body and looking at him expectantly. Bones bit the inside of his cheek and nodded slightly, more to himself than to her.

The tricorder did most of the work, scanning for internal injuries, but as tempted as he was, he couldn't just leave it at that. Jim was trusting him to find _something_ and by god, he would. Even if it meant nightmares for at least a month. He examined the injuries, noting as dispassionately as he could that the trauma around the eye socket suggested some sort of blunt object, and that the root of the tongue showed signs of ripping as opposed to cutting. Chapel remained stoic throughout, but their eyes never met. To look at one another, to acknowledge that this was actually happening, would have been too much.

"Patients appear to have expired from blood loss coupled with extreme shock," he said, switching off the tricorder. He was exhausted, perfectly prepared to lock himself in his office and drink his way to blissfully dreamless sleep when Chapel cleared her throat.

"Doctor," she murmured. He turned to see her holding the hand of one of the corpses. Her brows were drawn down in concerned concentration, and he stepped closer to see what she had found. "Look at this. There's blood under the fingernails…"

Bones leaned close and grunted in surprise. How he had failed to notice the dried blood crusted beneath the fingernails was… well, it was easy enough to understand. The bodies were covered in so much dried blood that it was a wonder he could see anything but dark red. But yes, Chapel was right, and he scraped the blood out with a small scalpel. For the first time, he felt a surge of excitement. "This must have come from the person who killed them," he said, hurrying the flakes of dried blood to the scanner. "See if they all have blood beneath their nails…"

He waited impatiently while the machine extracted the DNA and matched it, cycling through hundreds of thousands of Starfleet files and, eventually, flashing a face on the screen. Bones stared at it for a second, mildly confused, certain that he recognized the young man in front of him. His weary brain made the connection just as Chapel spoke again.

"They all have it," she said.

"Bring me more," he said. "Note which body the samples are from." He could sense Chapel's questioning glance, but he ignored it, feeding sample after sample into the machine, watching as a different face popped up each time. Faces that looked all too familiar.

Chapel stood beside him as the last face flashed across the screen, and her hand crept into his. Ordinarily, it was something he would have shied away from, but he clutched her now, both of them fully aware of what this discovery meant. "It could be something else," she said, a desperate edge to her voice.

"It's not something else," Bones answered. He spoke softly, as though afraid of disturbing the bodies. "It's their own blood under their nails, Christine. They did it to themselves."

He had barely finished speaking when the ship's alarms began to blare.

***

On the bridge, they all stared at the view screen, hands frozen over their control panels, eyes locked in confusion on the city that should not be there. It was on none of the charts, mentioned in none of the surveys, and had not appeared on their initial scans of the area. Only the _Enterprise_'s orbit had revealed it, a looming sand-colored metropolis that sprawled across the desert surface of the planet. Scanners had picked it up a few minutes ago and they'd all sat, frozen in disbelief until the duty officer had ordered a ship-wide yellow alert.

"We don't know where it's from or what it's doing down there," she explained, more to herself than to any of them. "Or how it even got there."

Which was strictly true, but Uhura was sure that she knew more about it than the rest of them, and that knowledge transformed what should have been confusion into bone-chilling fear. The alarms howled and it felt like her skull was ringing and the only things she could think about were the rushing sound of a massive volume of sound and that one word.

_Rising_…


End file.
